DAUPHIN DE MONTORGUEUIL, naval officer, Joseph Robinau de Villebon’s lieutenant, son of the governor of Châtellerault (France); d. probably 1694.

On 1 June 1689 the king had appointed him Villebon’s lieutenant at Port-Royal (Annapolis Royal, N.S.). The following spring Sir William Phips seized this post. A few days after the departure of Phips’s soldiers, 14 June, Villebon returned from France. Fearing that the occupation troops from Boston would arrive very soon, he decided to set up the seat of French government at Fort Jemseg, on the Saint John River. A messenger was dispatched to Fort Saint-Louis de Chedabouctou (Guysborough, N.S.), carrying orders to Lieut. Montorgueuil, who was in command there with about 12 men, to come and rejoin Villebon. But Chedabouctou had already been captured by Phips’s soldiers, under the leadership of Capt. Cyprian Southack*. The two chief participants in the event, Southack and Montorgueuil, have each left an account of the battle. The former says that it took place on 5 June 1690 (o.s.), whereas the latter places it on 14 June (N.S.). The heroic defence put up by Montorgueuil on that occasion earned him the praise of Buade de Frontenac in a dispatch addressed to the minister in November of the same year.

Montorgueuil was a prisoner of the English in August 1690 at Bilbao; in 1691 he was again taken prisoner, this time by a privateer from Middleburg, and was released some while later. At that time he was appointed a naval ensign. On 7 May 1692 he was listed among the naval officers selected by the king to serve on the ships that his majesty was having fitted out at Rochefort for Canada.

It is very likely that Dauphin de Montorgueuil is the person of the same name, a “lieutenant serving on a frigate or a flute from the port of Rochefort,” who died 26 July 1694 on board the Solide, off the Santo Domingo coast.

J.-Roger Comeau